Business Taxes Law Guide – Revision 2015

Alcoholic Beverage Tax Law

Business and Professions Code Provisions Relating To the Alcoholic Beverage Tax Law1

CHAPTER 1. GENERAL PROVISIONS AND DEFINITIONS2

Section 23007

23007. "Wine." "Wine" means the product obtained from normal alcoholic fermentation of the juice of sound ripe grapes or other agricultural products containing natural or added sugar or any such alcoholic beverage to which is added grape brandy, fruit brandy, or spirits of wine, which is distilled from the particular agricultural product or products of which the wine is made and other rectified wine products and by whatever name and which does not contain more than 15 percent added flavoring, coloring, and blending material and which contains not more than 24 percent of alcohol by volume, and includes vermouth and sake, known as Japanese rice wine.

Nothing contained in this section affects or limits the power, authority, or duty of the State Department of Health Services in the enforcement of the laws directed toward preventing the manufacture, production, sale, or transportation of adulterated, misbranded, or mislabeled alcoholic beverages, and the definition of "wine" contained in this section is limited strictly to the purposes of this division and does not extend to, or repeal by implication, any law preventing the production, manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated, misbranded, or mislabeled alcoholic beverages.

Wine definition.—Mixtures containing wine, alcohol, flavoring and water, with the added alcohol being three times as much as the wine are not wines within the meaning of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act. Tux Ginger Ale Co., Ltd. v. Davis, (1936) 12 Cal.App.2d 73.